Live: Amazon unveils its new Fire Phone

We’re getting set for the unveiling of Amazon’s new device, widely believed to be a smartphone, at a special event this morning here in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. My GeekWire colleague Todd Bishop and I will be live-blogging the action here in this post and following up with hands-on impressions throughout the day.

Amazon has really built up the anticipation for this one, starting with a teaser video that showed customers reacting with varying degrees of surprise to a mystery device.

Based on various reports and patent filings by the company, the phone is expected to include a 3D interface and the ability to interact via hand gestures.

Even if it can deliver on those features, the company’s big challenge will be standing out in a highly competitive market, led by Google and Apple. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos implicitly acknowledged that fact in packages sent to reporters in advance of the event, containing a copy of the children’s book, Mr. Pine’s Purple House, in which the main character struggles to make his house unique from all the others on his block.

The event is scheduled to get rolling at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time, and we’ll kick off the live blog here before the event starts.

Four rows back and dead center. Todd’s taking pictures and I’m on the keys. There’s a stage in front of us, and a wrap around screen with stars floating around in outer space. It’s pretty cool, but it’s no 3D.

We’re hearing from customers first: A funny guy from Issaquah begs “please consider me, I know the product is going to be awesome.” Another customer says, what’s that buried under an “I love Lucy” Dvd?, it’s the Apple TV.

Very quickly in 2014, there was tens of million of Amazon Prime members. He says it took “Patience, persistence and attention to details.” Practically, it also took spending a ton of money on entertainment stuff, like TV, movies and books.

Lots of Twitter praise. Missbumptious says Prime is the best life decision she’s every made. “If you are really out there,” Bezos says. “I bet that’s not true.” Bezos is being funny, and people are laughing!

“The most important thing we’ve done over the last 20 years is earn the trust of customers.” (Did he read my walk-up piece yesterday, because that’s what I wrote!) “How do you earn trust? You don’t ask for it, that never works, he says. The simple recipe: 1. Do hard things well. 2. Repeat.”

Some of the stats: They tried screens with 4.3 to 5.5 inches, but 4.7 inches is optimal for one-hand holding. “It is the perfect size for perfect use.” They also obsessed about outdoor viewing. There’s 2.2 GHz, so it’s fast. The best camera: 13 MP, image stabilization.

Second screen and X-Ray for Movies will be included from IMBD, and bringing over ASAP from Fire TV. WE’ll predict what you want to stream, we’ll cache it so it starts instantly. It’s an open ecosystem: HBO GO, Hulu Plus, ESPN, etc.

Customer service: Mayday is also coming to the phone. No one knows how to sync their calendar, turn on Bluetooth, turn off international roaming??? Well, Amazon offers Mayday, the tablet service that offers 24/7 video tech support. They’ve been answering in less than 10 seconds and it’s free.

Those items are now listed on the phone’s screen: The book can be purchased in hardback or the Kindle edition. The dishwasher detergent is also there. And, it can listen to music to, and identify songs for purchase or streaming.

Firefly also recognizes TV shows. It’s listening to “Game of Thrones,” and within two seconds at most, it recognized the specific episode, and the SCENE!! The video was 49 minutes and one second into that scene, available from X-ray from IMBD.

Firefly is also for art: You can take a picture of a portrait, and you can learn about the painting and the artist from Wikipedia. A picture of a phone number is also recognized, presumably for dialing.

There’s a designated FireFly button, so this isn’t just another service. This is a critical component and selling point of this phone. No passcode required. There’s no friction. Access it anytime, anywhere.

A third-party SDK will be available to developers to keep the FireFly interesting. iHeartRadio, for instance, has integrated it to help identify music. myFitnesspal has integrated to find nutrition info of items. Bezos tells another joke!: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that Cheetos are bad for you! They are day-glow orange!

Bezos is explaining “Geometric perspective,” which gives art more depth, to give the look of shadows, etc. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t look behind items in the art. If you wanted to do this, the piece of art would have to be redrawn every time you moved your head.

A shopping demo: When browsing for a new dress, you can tilt the phone to scroll through the options. When you drill down on a particular dress, the dress zooms in and out. It’s something called “linticular,” which I might be spelling wrong.

An example of dynamic perspective. First, the directional icon blocks the street name. When the phone is tilted by the user, the icon moves out of the way to let the user see around it to the street name.

Bezos is feeling good. He’s got another joke, this time about Justin Timberlake: “I have unbelievable admiration for anyone who can make a tiny fedora cool, seriously. It’s harder than building a smartphone.”

This has been in the works for four years, and we had early prototypes in the first week. If you have to know where the user’s head is all the time, you have to do this: Have a piece of headgear on the person. The problem? The dorky headgear.

This is the ultimate machine-learning problem: You need lots of data to make this happen. They did it in a lab with a robot collecting images from various heads with disco lighting to collect millions of images.

Bezos is switching course. He says people like the small touches too. In the calendar app, a tilt to the right will let you send a message to everyone attending a meeting with canned messages, like “running late,” “start without me.”

All included for $199 for two-year contract or $27/month: Dynamic perspective, firefly button, mayday, unlimited photo storage, dozens of “small touches,” exclusive features, like ASAP, and Amazon’s content. This is 32 GB of storage. Pre-order today and ships July 25.

Leading up to today’s events, the biggest leaks all had to do with 3D or “dynamic perspective,” but the real cool features have to do with Firefly. It’s like Shazam, but not just for music recognition.

Much more coverage to come, thanks for reading. Let us know in the comments what more you want to learn about the phone.

Tricia Duryee is a GeekWire staff reporter, a longtime technology journalist who covers beats including mobile devices, e-commerce, online payments, and video games. Follow her on Twitter @triciad and email her at tricia@geekwire.com.

So to be clear Amazon is not late to mobile but Microsoft was three years ago right?

Peter Claassen

It’s only late if it’s nothing new.

DaMarico Fowler

Oh okay then.

Steve B

How long is the (foolish) AT&T exclusivity?

Salty_Swede

Will have to check this device out. But would probably have been a more interesting presentation if it was live streamed over video as well

http://www.intrinsicstrategy.com/ FrankCatalano

I’m not certain who exactly this phone is for — it seems the natural target audience is shopaholics who don’t already own a smartphone that can run the Amazon shopping app. Is there anyone else who would switch phones (and perhaps carriers, to AT&T) for this? What’s the customer sweet spot?